To meet the demand for wireless data traffic having increased since deployment of 4th generation (4G) communication systems, efforts have been made to develop an improved 5th generation (5G) or pre-5G communication system. Therefore, the 5G or pre-5G communication system is also called a ‘Beyond 4G Network’ or a ‘Post LTE System’.
The 5G communication system is considered to be implemented in higher frequency (mmWave) bands, e.g., 60 GHz bands, so as to accomplish higher data rates. To decrease propagation loss of the radio waves and increase the transmission distance, the beamforming, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), Full Dimensional MIMO (FD-MIMO), array antenna, an analog beam forming, large scale antenna techniques are discussed in 5G communication systems.
In addition, in 5G communication systems, development for system network improvement is under way based on advanced small cells, cloud Radio Access Networks (RANs), ultra-dense networks, device-to-device (D2D) communication, wireless backhaul, moving network, cooperative communication, Coordinated Multi-Points (CoMP), reception-end interference cancellation and the like.
In the 5G system, Hybrid FSK and QAM Modulation (FQAM) and sliding window superposition coding (SWSC) as an advanced coding modulation (ACM), and filter bank multi carrier (FBMC), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and sparse code multiple access (SCMA) as an advanced access technology have been developed.
A Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is technology which enables a terminal located within a specific service providing area to wirelessly connect to the Internet based on radio frequency technology. In a WLAN system, an Access Point (AP) selects a channel and communicates using the selected channel. Due to this, the signal of a specific AP may collide with the signal of another AP using the same channel or may be disturbed by the signal of another AP using an adjacent channel. Accordingly, various methods for selecting a channel so as to minimize signal collision and interference between the APs in the WLAN system are provided. For example, a method for an AP to select a channel having no interference through channel monitoring, or a method of selecting a channel which is not adjacent to a channel used by an adjacent AP is provided as a related-art method.
Meanwhile, as the amount of data transmitted through a wireless communication system has increased, a method of bonding and using a plurality of channels to expand a transmission bandwidth has been proposed. For example, a channel bonding method which bonds adjacent channels and uses them as a single channel in a WLAN system has been proposed.